Roundtable

From King to Obama: Race in America

On April 4, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis, Tennessee, as he stood on a hotel balcony, where he was to lead a march of sanitation workers protesting against low wages and poor working conditions. He died soon afterwards. Reverend Jesse Jackson was on the balcony with King at the time.

On the fortieth anniversary of that fateful day, America faces the prospect of its first black presidential candidate in Senator Barack Obama. A mark of progress? In some ways, yes. When Jesse Jackson ran for president in the 1980s, he was seen as the candidate of African Americans, whereas Obama has won multi-racial support, including many white voters. But, while progress has been made toward racial reconciliation, the divide between blacks, whites, and people identified with other races in this country is still very real. To the extent that Americans deny this reality, claims  Senator Obama in his March 18 speech, “A More Perfect Union” speech, we are trapped in a "racial stalemate," but not irrevocably so.

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination, and in keeping with the SSRC’s long commitment to fostering studies of race, ethnicity, and immigration*, we have invited several leading scholars in the Council’s networks to discuss three questions:

1) SPEECH: What did you think of Sen. Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech?

2) DIALOGUE: Sen. Obama called for a national discussion of race and racial politics. Is this what America needs right now to move beyond racial gridlock and denial?

3) BOOKS: If you were an advisor to Senator Obama on race in America, are there any social science books or other resources you would suggest for his reading list?

Mary-Lea Cox
SSRC Communications Director
4 April 2008

* During its foundation in 1923, the Social Science Research Council took over a project that had been designed to study the physical aspects of race mixing in  America resulting from immigration. With the SSRC,  the project's emphasis shifted to social aspects of immigration, which led to a subsequent project focused on race relations. This shift in perspective eventually contributed to understandings of race as a social as well as a physical construct.